George’ Clooney’s 2005 film ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’, a tribute to the great journalist, Edward R. Morrow, who signed off with those words, should be shown again.

Edward R. Murrow

Morrow was CBS’s star newsman. His boss William Paley, did not interfere with editorial decisions, but would “not allow editorial decisions’ to bring down the network. When Morrow denounced Joseph McCarthy, for conducting a veritable witch hunt against supposed Communists, Paley riled but stood behind him.

Morrow felt compelled to break with the media’s uncritical coverage of Congress’s anti-communist crusade when the Air Force dismissed a pilot on grounds that his immigrant father had subscribed to a foreign newspaper, supposedly making the young man a security risk. His principled stance eventually led to McCarthy’s downfall, and the film closes with a shot of President Eisenhower reminding Americans that “we have habeus corpus’ and no one can take that from us.

A year after Clooney’s film was released, in 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Patriot Act, eliminating habeus corpus for those suspected of terrorism – or, in an eery throwback to the airman’s father – of associating with terrorist suspects. Seven years later, the corporate media maintains an obedient, united front against Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and a growing cohort of whistle-blowers.

In the films’ final take, Morrow maintains that television could be a powerful educational tool, but he was not heard in the big three boardrooms. CNN came on the scene in 1980 with the desire to do better, but with Ted Turner’s ouster, it became just another spin machine. Neither the print media nor mainstream telelvision acknowledge the existence of foreign networks such as Al-Jazeera, France 24 or RT, hence most Americans haven’t a clue as to what the rest of the world is thinking, doing or wanting.

Publlc ignorance has led to a situation that even the most astute observers would have deemed impossible just six months ago: Edward Snowden is weighing whether to swap his Moscow asylum for Berlin, or testify remotely about NSA spying on the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The arrow of time, combined with the acceleration of energy within the world system is moving it toward a bifurcation point that signals a change of era. Notwithstanding Morrow’s fervent wishes, our luck is running out.Photo from cliff licensed under Creative Commons

the film closes with a shot of President Eisenhower reminding Americans that “we have habeus corpus’ and no one can take that from us.

Ike must be doing cartwheels in his grave because not only did the current US President lobby to take habeas corpus from us, both Houses of Congress agreed and passed a statute taking habeas corpus away from us.

Think about how far we, as a society, have come. From a widely held and steadfast belief that no one can take habeas corpus away from us (I say widely held because Ike was speaking for most Americans when he said this and it was not a controversial statement) to living in a country where a large majority of supposedly elected representatives publicly supported and passed a bill ending habeas corpus.

And to top it off, the President of the United States that signed the bill ending habeas corpus and thus making it the law of the land was re-elected rather easily by Americans.

I mean that change is unbelievable, and I know I’ve said this many times here but I’m gonna say it again, that’s the thing that blows my mind more than anything else. That most Americans shrugged at losing their habeas corpus rights and largely voted for those responsible is just so shocking to me that I can’t put it into words. Never did I believe it would be like this in America.

Sorry for the focus on a small point in your diary, but it’s no small point to me and still mostly blows my mind. I mean many, if not most, that post here at FDL approved of the taking of our habeas corpus rights by voting for those responsible.

It’s not a small point at all. It’s HUGE, in fact, beyond Reagan’s wildest wet dreams. But it DID happen. And the fact that the Democratic Party now fully supports this tyrannical fascist excrement speaks whole encyclopedia sets.

I don’t mind your focusing on habeus corpus. But I wrote the blog because seeing Clooney’s film brought home to me more vividly than any writing could, the abysmal state of the American media.

I began criticizing American journalism in the seventies, and do not agree with today’s conventional wisdom that it was doing its job then – or for that matter that Americans were getting a decent deal then. Having lived half my life in various European countries, I know firsthand the difference between a ‘land of opportunity’ and one in which solidarity is a basic tenet.

The fact that elected officials can rationalize that state-supported health care is wrong is what blows my mind.

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